Growing up in Nelson, young New Zealand singer/songwriter and musician NÏKA passed by the evening and weekend hours by writing sad bedroom folk songs on her guitar. With practice, the fragile melancholy of her music took her from her bedroom to stages around town. “I wrote many songs as a teenager, scribbling away in a notebook,” she recalls. It was almost like a diary, and it took a while for me to start showing anyone what I had come up with.”

In recent years, however, NÏKA has transformed the moody intimacy of her early musical efforts to into a series of vibrant, colourful and carefree collaborations with two rising New Zealand synth-pop and dance acts, along the way discovering another mode of musical being. In her words, “Writing acoustic folk was a very calming and introspective thing for me; but electronic pop allows me to feel happy, free and open with my emotions. Fun, fast and hopeful.”

With ‘What You Need’ with Baynk having racked up over five million streams, and ‘Shelter’ with SACHI surpassing a million plays online, NÏKA’s fast becoming a talking point for those paying attention to the progression and development of New Zealand’s rich and rapidly-paced synth-pop and dance music cultures. Currently busy writing solo material with producers Alex Wildwood and Sam de Jong, NÏKA’s poised. It’s her time. “Writing music and singing allows me to let go of my inhibitions,” she continues. I hope to have that effect on people listening to my songs. Make them dance and feel upbeat.”